Dave HARDY: Neck pillow

Dave Hardy’s sculptures proceed from the abstract assembly of salvaged industrial materials (polyurethane foam, glass plates, metal bars) and heteroclite objects (pens, modeling clay, pretzels, coconuts…). Closely interlocked, these elements compose autonomous structures of various sizes that seem to override the basic principles of balance and gravity with the grandiloquence of impossible shapes. Following game rules dictated by contradictions, Dave Hardy’s works present their visual aberration after a thorough exploration of   matter, a set of gestures designed to hold together elements that theoretically have nothing in common, or almost nothing. A large part of his practice is based on a process made invisible. Engaged in an intense body-to-body struggle, Dave Hardy saturates the foam in cement; gorged with medium it is then kneaded, manipulated into voluptuous folds, wooden exoskeletons holding them in place before they are removed. Glass plates and objects are then pressed onto and inserted into the matter as it rigidifies, thus stabilizing the whole.